The focus of this paper is the impact of multiple stakeholders on a strategic change process in higher
education. The paper describes an institutional change and legitimacy formation process from a dialectical
perspective by analysing multilevel institutional work and discussing how multilevel strategic actions act
as drivers for change in higher education. This paper builds on my earlier doctoral research articles.

According to the results of my doctoral study, multilevel institutional work and connected transformation
mechanisms have special micro-macro linkages. Based on the results, I present a multilevel process
model for institutional change in higher education, which illustrates the causal macro-micro relations,
where macro-level actions cause micro-level actions, which in turn aggregate up to macro-level actions
and further to micro-level institutional work. The model shows how strategy works as practice and
connects the institutional work with the organisation level and macro level development and higher
education policy.

The institutional change in higher education is characterised by the interplay between multilevel
boundary work and practice work. In the initial phase, managerial regulative actions de-institutionalise
the existing political regime. In the second phase, normative actions destabilise the existing processes
and social arrangements and disrupt existing structures and relationships while new ones are
introduced. In the third phase, normative actions stabilise new internal processes, practices, social
arrangements and structures when finally, regulative actions strengthen organisations disciplinary
legitimacy by affecting the macro level decision making, inter-organisational relationships and
disciplinary structure. This paper illustrates the institutional change process in higher education by
presenting a theoretical process model and examples of multilevel institutional work.

The empirical focus of the study is in the engineering and technology field in Finland. To study how
institutional change in higher education happens and how multiple stakeholders engage in and affect
the change, an event-based process approach was adopted to explain the temporal order of
interconnected events and stakeholder actions. A single case study design allowed exploring and
understanding relations between actors to gain contextualised insight into a complex phenomenon.
Despite its limitations, this single case study reveals interesting inter-university and intra-university
dynamics and provides a novel empirical perspective to higher education development by connecting
institutional work with institutional change and legitimacy formation.

Keywords: Higher education, institutional change, institutional work, agency, legitimacy, stakeholder.